POKÉMON GO’S BIGGEST APPEAL IS ITS SOCIAL ASPECT

Pokémon Go offers many things like competitive play, capturing cool Pokémon in a real life setting, but it’s the social aspect of it that has users playing the game.

Pokémon Go is a free-to-play app that you can download for any smartphone. The game allows players to catch Pokémon and trade them with other players, also train to become a Pokémon Master. The game works by using your phone’s Global Positioning System (GPS) for your real world location and augmented reality to bring up Pokémon on the screen by overlapping.

The game was released in July 2016, and since then, Pokémon Go is known for having the most first week downloads from the Apple app store than any other app in history, according to Pokémon Go Statistics. Apple confirmed the record, however did not release any figures on how many downloads. In the first week, the game had already made 14 million dollars.

Nowadays, you’ll often see people during the day or even the night with their phones out, on the huny for rare Pokémon. Or you’ll see Pokémon users lounging around on a predetermined landmark used as a Pokéstop. Pokéstops are where users can interact and get items from. In addition, it draws a lot of users to these locations, making it very social, which is the main reason according to Pokémon Go users that keeps them active players.

“The completionist “gotta catch ‘em all” is a pull for me definitely. The integration with real-life locations is giving me a reason to get up and walk/run to places nearby that I otherwise would never have seen. I’ve definitely gotten more cardio the past two days than I have the last three months combined. Also, the social aspect: I’m running into a bunch of other Pokémon trainers out in the real world, and it’s an easy way to strike up conversation with strangers. The sheer number of people that are engrossed in finding Pokémon in the real world (and walking around) is amazing,” says Pokémon Go user Angelo in response to a Facebook survey.

Twitter user, Leslie Kivett, says meeting other users of the game and sharing experiences is fun, and is what makes playing Pokemon Go appealing.

The exploring needed to find the creatures in the game acts as a motivator to go to new places, Nate Hales says on Twitter.

According to Twitter users who are Pokémon Go players, the social aspect of the game is what makes Pokémon Go the most appealing to play. However, Pokémon Go is not the augmented reality game (ARG) to offer social aspects. Ingress is also an ARG game created by the company behind Pokémon Go, Niantic, but it doesn't have a popularity like the well known brand, Pokémon. Pokémon is a popular franchise with a long history dating back to 1996, which was when the first Pokémon games came to the Nintendo Game Boy system in Japan

Pokémon Go has been released in over 50 countries since July 7, with an estimated 500 million downloads to date.

According to DMR Directory of Social Network Statistics, people spend 26 minutes each day playing Pokémon Go. That amounts to 31 per cent of a year spent on the app.

Data from Sensor Tower, SurveyMonkey, and Apptopia suggest that Pokemon Go's daily active users, downloads, and time spent on the app per day are on a downward trend. Pokémon Go hit its peak in early July, and by late July had already dropped by 50 per cent in interest. On Oct. 2, it only had 6 per cent interest compared to the game's peak.

The game still offers social benefits like gathering strangers into one place they may not have visited otherwise. The Pokémon Go app is still waiting to be released in several countries, so the engagement on this app may increase over time.

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